Nine Inch Nails, ”Closer” (1994)

”We made it with an old camera from 1919, and the whole thing was hand-cranked,” recalls director Mark Romanek, who also helmed feature films Never Let Me Go and One Hour Photo in addition to iconic music videos for Madonna, En Vogue, and Lenny Kravitz. ”We made prints, and I personally spent a couple of days dragging them around the parking lot and spraying aerosol shellac and holding lighters under them. We were just making it for art’s sake, and YouTube didn’t exist then, so it was a pretty ballsy and extravagant thing for Trent [Reznor, NIN’s frontman] to do. But MTV liked it, so that started a long negotiation of how we can get it on the air. I want to go on record about the monkey: That monkey was not in any danger even though he appears to be in distress. The monkey was just munching on bits of banana and enjoying himself. We had an ASPCA person on the set. It wasn’t harmed, and actually got paid more than some of the crew.”